As I have said a few times elsewhere, the coverage of this is somewhat hysterical and not necessarily rigorous. Statistics can be used to hammer home any hysterical point on anybody's behalf or interest and add a sheen of scientific rigour and truthful analysis to any godawful account. Say one person dies as a result of being handled by the Swiss police, therefore it would be possible to create a postulate that assumes the Swiss form of policing is necessarily repressive - a single death stands against any ethical high ground that a state can possess. Extending this, every non-lethal encounter with the Swiss police in the light of a death may be construed as seriously flawed, bringing the whole constitutional legitimacy of the Swiss state into question.Take that further and make it a micro state, like San Marino. A few, maybe ten, deaths would probably be 1% statistic on those who died at the hands of their constabulary.Therefore San Marino may be the most repressive shithole ever, despite the standard of living there being okay. That is definitely a recipe tantamount to cooking the books!

The thing I have been wondering is what nature repressions took. Figures for the USSR are more readily available and post Stalin imprisonment rates aren't as high as you might expect, which makes me assume that repression (both political and normal crime) may have taken other measures as well (fines, reprimands fx)

Given that there obviously was crime in the eastern bloc, you would expect, for example, imprisonment rates to be a mix of crime and political. I guess the interesting, and harder, question is where the split is.

Soviet America is Free America!

Under communism, there is no freedom; you are not free to live in poverty, be homeless, to be without an education, to starve, or to be without a job

In The Triumph of Evil (written in 2000) Austin Murphy (citing the book Stalinist Terror by Getty and Co.) notes (pp. 78-79.) that "the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year. This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1990s and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population.... less than 10% of the arrests during Stalin's rule [were] for political reasons or secret police matters."

Murphy's book is particularly focused on the GDR, and concerning imprisonment in that country he says (pp. 118-119) that, "About 2500 people per year were arrested by the Stasi... Although these conviction and imprisonment rates may seem high, they are actually similar to the rates for Federal crimes in the USA.... Although about one hundred people were arrested annually for publicly slandering East Germany in the 1970s, there was a total of only 11 people arrested for that crime between 1985 and 1988."

Murphy also says (pp. 98-99) that "the amount spent per capita on police, secret police, and public security was less in East Germany than in West Germany. In particular, such spending by East Germany was $225 per East German citizen in 1989, using the official exchange rates which approximated purchasing power exchange rates, while spending by West Germany on internal security was about $264 per citizen in the same year. It should be mentioned that about 1/5 of the total police, secret police, and public security personnel in East Germany were actually heavily-armed military troops (primarily trained to fight armed enemy infiltration, paratroopers and saboteurs), whereas all West German military formations are paid for out of defense spending as opposed to public security spending."

That sounds like a great resource Ismail. I'll definitely be checking it out. Thanks.

"The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG

Wow, thanks very much. This will give me no excuse not to begin reading it in the near future.

"The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG

Yes I actually know the guy putting together redscans, should be more scans up soon as a matter of fact.

But, the author Austin Murphy was in East Germany in period 1989-90, I was curious if anyone has read his other book on the subject, "The Last Year of a Country That Never Existed" ?? Can't find any reviews on it or much information at all really.

Yes I actually know the guy putting together redscans, should be more scans up soon as a matter of fact.

But, the author Austin Murphy was in East Germany in period 1989-90, I was curious if anyone has read his other book on the subject, "The Last Year of a Country That Never Existed" ?? Can't find any reviews on it or much information at all really.

I may have to pick that up. I'd be very interested in reading it, after reading "Triumph of Evil"

Soviet America is Free America!

Under communism, there is no freedom; you are not free to live in poverty, be homeless, to be without an education, to starve, or to be without a job

Of course there were political prisoners in the Soviet bloc, beyond question and so what? Every political system that holds power defends itself and vigorously.

The British were ruthless in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, it was UK law that no member of Parliament representing Northern Ireland could vote on any legislation directly concerned with Northern Ireland security.

The US has FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that established SECRET COURTS, SECRET TRIALS, SECRET ARRESTS, SECRET PRISON SENTENCES, SECRET RECORDS, SECRET SEARCH WARRANTS and made it a crime to discuss ANY case involved with the act, including with an attorney. This act has been applied to US CITIZENS AND US LEGAL RESIDENTS more than once.

It is hypocritical to pretend that the "dirty, rotten, Godless, Communists," were alone in their punishment of political dissidents, especially considering our little present day torture chamber in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.